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Lando Norris impressed Alain Prost with how he changed over the 2025 F1 season to win the drivers’ title, but the McLaren star still lacks a trait that Max Verstappen has.
Prost does not think Norris was “outstanding” at the start of the year while teammate Oscar Piastri was taking control of the F1 drivers’ championship. Norris opened the year with a 23-point lead over his papaya pal, yet was 10 adrift only four Grands Prix and an F1 Sprint later.
Norris won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix back in March after holding off Piastri, before the home favourite spun amid the late rain shower, and then Verstappen. But the 26-year-old then made a host of errors during qualifying and struggled to get level with Piastri.
It also looked like the title was heading elsewhere after Norris retired from the Dutch Grand Prix in round 15 of 24, as he faced his largest deficit to Piastri all year at 34 points. Yet Norris outscored Piastri across each of the following six rounds, which ultimately won him the title.
Alain Prost still feels Lando Norris lacks the ‘same grit’ as Max Verstappen
Prost appreciates how Norris dealt with the mental challenge of fighting back against Piastri to win the 2025 F1 drivers’ title by just two points over Verstappen and 13 to his papaya pal. Verstappen outscored Piastri in each of the final nine rounds to overturn a 104-point deficit.
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But Prost is now eager to see how Norris changes as an F1 champion, as he still feels like the 26-year-old lacks the “grit” Verstappen has. Prost also adds that Red Bull were a one-man team with Verstappen in 2025, as Yuki Tsunoda only scored 30 of their 451 points all season.
“Max and his team were on their own,” Prost noted, via quotes by SPEEDWEEK. “Their main rival, McLaren, shared most of the wins with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
“Especially this season, a top driver had to be resilient and mentally strong, and Norris often was. Lando wasn’t outstanding at the start of the season, but then he turned things around within the team.
“At the same time, in my view, Norris doesn’t have the same grit as Verstappen. And it will be exciting to see what kind of Norris we’ll see in 2026, now that he’s world champion.”
Lando Norris fought back from several self-inflicted setbacks to win the 2025 F1 drivers’ title
Verstappen wrestled everything he could get out of his Red Bull RB21 at the start of the year when the McLaren MCL39 often had a big advantage. The MCL39 was the class of the field in hot conditions due to its ability to stop the rear tyres overheating throughout a race stint.
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Norris failed to fully capitalise on the McLaren MCL39’s dominance and he paid the price for his mistakes during qualifying in China, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Also, Norris crashed out of the Canadian GP by driving into a closing gap when he rear-ended Piastri with four laps left.
Piastri also took full control of the championship when Norris retired from the Dutch GP due to an oil fitting failure. The Briton suffered what would be the only mechanical failure for the top three drivers in the standings all year and it cost him 18 points that could have been key.
Norris only saw his title rivals fail to finish a race in 2025 when Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli took Verstappen out in the Austrian GP and when Piastri crashed in the Azerbaijan GP. McLaren’s double disqualification in Las Vegas cost Norris a P2, while Piastri lost his P4.
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